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G l obal dev el opment professi onal s netw ork The women who chang ed the world

The first woman in space: 'People shouldn’t

waste money on wars'
In 1963 Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space. On her 80th
birthday, she looks back at a lifetime of immense political change

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 Valentina Tereshkova with Tim Peake’s Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft in the Science Museum. Photograph:
Jody_Kingzett/Jody Kingzett

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 Mary Dejevsky
Wednesday 29 March 2017 02.00 EDT

P
arachuting was her first love. The moment she could, Valentina
Tereshkova joined the renowned paramilitary flying club in her native
Yaroslavl (without telling her mother) and trained almost every
weekend. She has more than 90 jumps under her belt. “I did night jumps, too,
on to land and water – the Volga river.” Day and night, she tells me, “it’s a
very different experience, but both are wonderful”, and she spreads her arms
wide as though balancing herself in flight, radiating delight. “I learned to
wait as long as possible before pulling the cord, just to feel the air; 40
seconds, 50 seconds ... It’s not really falling; you experience enormous
pleasure from the sensation of your whole body. It’s marvellous.”

It is hard to believe that the woman sitting across the table from me
enthusing about her early hobby is 80. All right, she turned 80 only a few days
ago, but even immaculate hair and makeup can only flatter so much. She
looks to me not a day over 70. My gaze keeps alighting on her elegant hands
with their flawless dark nail varnish. My own (rather younger) hands look
wrinkled and gnarled by comparison.

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 We are somewhere deep and indeterminate within the cavernous Science
Museum in London, and Tereshkova had arrived, as dignitaries tend to do,
suddenly, and with a flurry of suited escorts. I had seen her so often, in
photographs, in film, and from a distance in person – that she seemed
entirely familiar, from her tailored suit to the medal she wears, red banner
with gold star, denoting her status as a Hero of the Soviet Union, then the
highest state award.

The reason for her celebrity is almost as hard to believe now as the
parachuting. Over 50 years ago, in 1963, Tereshkova became the first woman
to go into space, and it was her parachuting experience that qualified her for
selection. She was only 26 when she made her one and only space flight, but
that feat has defined the rest of her life. It propelled her into the upper
reaches of the Soviet elite, and gave her security for life. That elevation
though came at a life-long cost: a treadmill of obligations that has lasted
more than half a century.

Public speaking, accepting honours, roving the world as a citizen-diplomat,

being a very visible part of Soviet, and now Russian, public life, are roles that
she continues to fulfil to this day. Hence her visit to London for the opening
of a display of artefacts linked to her cosmonaut’s life. It is one of a series of
UK-Russia collaborations, following the hugely successful Russian space
exhibition at the museum last year.

Has she honestly enjoyed this life

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 lived so much in the public eye? “I
think it’s tremendously important to
meet people, to establish a
connection and tell people about
space,” she says gravely. “It can
increase trust, and that is something
that is so badly needed, today.”

Aware of the current chill in the

international climate, Tereshkova
sees herself, (not for the first time)
with a responsibility to help improve
things through public diplomacy. In
the UK, she might be surprised to
discover how relatively few now
know her name. The global impact of
her flight, with the near-universal
recognition that followed, has faded
over the years, though not in Russia,
Tereshkova after a parachute
jump, summer 1960. Photograph:
and not for me, as a child of that era.
Yaroslavl State Historical-
Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve Unsmiling and austere, sometimes in
military uniform, Tereshkova is a
fixture in my memory as she remains for many Russians. She was always
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 conspicuous, not least because women were so few in the top line-ups for
official Soviet occasions. As a Moscow-based correspondent in the late 1980s,
I saw her at the various political gatherings convened by Mikhail Gorbachev
in his twin causes of glasnost and perestroika. She made the transfer,
effortlessly, or so it seemed, into the elite of post-Soviet Russia.

But it is the grainy footage of Tereshkova the cosmonaut that is most

memorable. I am just old enough to remember the early “space race”, with
the Americans and the Soviets vying for supremacy in the heavens. These
were years when a distinction was observed between astronauts (American)
and cosmonauts (Russian), and the terms “space” and “cosmos” existed side
by side.

We knew about Laika, the dog who won the animal space race for the Soviet
Union in 1957, but who died sooner than we knew. Four years later, Yuri
Gagarin just pipped the American, Alan Shepard, to be the first man into
space. A year later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

Then, in 1963, the pendulum swung back, with Tereshkova registering a win
for the Soviets, when she became the first woman to fly in space. Perhaps the
most coveted prize, though, went to the Americans when they made the first
moon landing in 1969. You can sense, even 40 years on, that this victory still
rankles just a little with Russians to this day.

Revisiting the rivalry of the space race helps cast light on mysteries that long
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 surrounded Tereshkova’s flight. One is the suggestion that it was, in many
respects, a failure: The charges were that the first female cosmonaut had
been too ill and lethargic to conduct the planned tests on board; and/or that
she had unreasonably challenged orders.

Tereshkova only gave her definitive account 30 years later, and she repeats it
for my benefit. She denies being ill – or more ill than might be expected – or
failing to complete the on-board tests; the voyage was, actually extended
from one to three days at her request, and the tests had been planned only
for one.

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 Tereshkova with the ‘heroes of the Soviet Union, pilot-cosmonauts of the USSR’.
Photograph: Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, Moscow

As for insubordination, there was a hitch, and a serious one, that emerged
soon after lift-off. As she tells it, she discovered that the settings for re-entry
were incorrect, to the point where she would have sped into outer space,
rather than back to Earth. She was eventually sent new settings, but her
space centre bosses made her swear to secrecy about the mistake, to save
their own reputation and that of the programme. “We insisted that all was
OK; we didn’t talk about it. We kept it secret for 30 years, until the person
who made the mistake was in his grave.”

The view of the Earth from space remains with

her, as it does with so many astronauts, as “a
When you are up planet at once so beautiful and so fragile”.
there, you are Everyone, she says, “Americans, Asians, everyone
homesick for Earth. who has seen it says the same thing, how
When you get back, unbelievably beautiful the Earth is and how very
you just want to get important it is to look after it. Our planet suffers
down and hug it from human activity, from fires, from war; we
V alent ina Tereshkova have to preserve it.”
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 Had the experience changed her? “When you are
up there, you are homesick for Earth as your cradle. When you get back, you
just want to get down and hug it.”

She is particularly concerned about the risk from asteroids, and ferrets
around in her bag to find a fragment of a meteorite that hit Russia. “It’s tiny,”
she says, “but very heavy.” She wants more work to be done to avert the
threat of a devastating collision. “People shouldn’t waste money on wars, but
come together to discuss how to defend the world from threats like asteroids
coming from outer space.”

Tereshkova shares with astronauts and

Guardian women
cosmonauts around the world a profound
seminar: How
nostalgia for the experience of space. Having
women can change
hoped against hope to make another flight, she
th e world
is on record as saying that she would volunteer
Read mor e for a one-way trip to Mars.

I flick back to the day she was selected for the space mission, after hard
months of training and continual monitoring, from among five women who
were competing for the single slot on Vostok 6. Was she surprised, and
weren’t the others envious? Not at all, she says almost scornfully. “We
believed each of us was worthy of being chosen.” Had she kept up with the
others since? I ask, (there have been reports that she is less solicitous of
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 friends and family than she could have been). Surprised by the question,
Tereshkova allows herself a rare smile and her eyes light up. Yes, she says,
the group meets up from time to time, obligations and illness permitting.
“There is a bond, a comradeship, that never goes away.”

There may indeed be a special bond among the early cosmonauts, but as she
grew used to fame, Tereshkova’s personal life became rocky. Her first
marriage to a fellow cosmonaut, Andriyan Nikolayev, had been encouraged,
if not actually arranged, by the space authorities as a fairytale message to the
country. The then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev officiated at the nuptials.
But this state-sanctioned element made it hard when the relationship turned
sour. The split was finally formalised in 1982, when Tereshkova married Yuli
Shaposhnikov, a surgeon, with whom she lived happily until his death in
1999.

Tereshkova’s life is unique as the first woman

Indira Jaising: 'In
in space, but she is also inevitably a child of her
India, you can’t even
times. Her 80 years span an extraordinary
dream of equal
kaleidoscope of Russian history. I run through
justice. Not at all'
it, for her response. She was born in 1937, a
Read mor e year that casts, I suggest, a certain shadow
(when Stalin’s purges were at their height). She
catches the reference, but does not elaborate.

After the political thaw, under Khrushchev, came the long “stagnation”,
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 under Leonid Brezhnev, followed by the tumultuous reforms introduced by
Gorbachev. Tereshkova stops me mid-flow. “The Soviet Union was important
for more than one generation. I am not ignoring the mistakes, the highs and
the lows, but as a whole … It is wrong to paint it only in dark colours. There
was a lot of good as well.”

This is a familiar defence of the Soviet Union. For many Russians who lived
through those years, the end of the Soviet Union is regarded as a betrayal.
How does Tereshkova see it? In an echo of Putin’s much-quoted remark, she
says “We all experienced the end of the Soviet Union as a personal tragedy
and can’t forgive those who allowed it to happen.” How does she rate
Gorbachev? She almost spits out her answer. “I don’t respect him; I don’t
even want to hear his name.” How about Boris Yeltsin, who wrested power,
to be the first president after the Soviet collapse? “I didn’t know him. The one
I know is Vladimir Putin.”

Tereshkova is a big fan of Putin and

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he, it would appear, of her. He
congratulated her personally on her
70th and 80th birthdays and added to
her tally of awards. “An awful lot
depends on leaders,” she says. “Putin
took over a country that was on the
brink of disintegration; he rebuilt it,
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 and gave us hope again.” People trust
him, she says. “You only have to see
Russian president Vladimir Putin how he is received, how people
wishes Valentina Tereshkova happy
80th birthday. Photograph: Mikhail respond to him. He’s a splendid
Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images person.”

It appears that the habits of a Soviet lifetime die hard. In so saying,

Tereshkova reflects the views of many ordinary Russians, of a generation
that has lived through almost continual, and often alarming, change. They
grew up, consciously or not, if not in fear, then knowing the price of not
conforming. They embrace the stability they associate with Putin – and that
is at least part of his success.

Could Tereshkova have done more – to advance the cause of women, say, to
promote individual rights – given her privileged position and the status she
enjoyed? Perhaps. But, she showed that women could do what was then
regarded as the most state of the art, most demanding feat – going into
space, solo.

Seen from today’s Russia, her one pioneering feat, followed by a lifetime of
civic duty, have served to keep both the capability of women and the fragility
of the planet in the public eye, and that must be accounted a contribution,
too.

Valentina Tereshkova: First Woman in Space is at the Science Museum until 17

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 September 2017.

Guardian women seminar: How women can change the world is being held at the
Guardian offices in London on Thursday 4 May. Register to attend here.

Join our communit y of development professionals and humanit arians.

Follow @GuardianGDP on Twit t er.

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